Nope. Missions promote exploration. It would suck to drop a drone at an airport during a layover or in a town while quickly driving through and be able to knockout all mission murals in the area without ever really visiting the locations the missions are promoting.
The addition of drone-only/enabled missions might be a decent middle ground, but opening all current missions to drones by default would be pretty unpopular.
I think I’d be more okay with this if there were drone specific missions and they were displayed in their own area, separate from current missions.
you might tap an icon to view drone missions..
Ive put in some miles and effort for some of the missions Ive done and I feel like they would lose value knowing others had done them from their couch...
I agree with @ZeroHecksGiven. I like the idea of something like missions that we could do with drones, because the current 'alternate between 2 high level portals for the best gear and most glyph points' mechanic is boring, but I don't think allowing drones (or at least the mk1 drone) into the existing mission system would work well at all, not least because missions can have larger gaps than a drone can reach, which wouldn't be much fun for agents.
Creating missions for drones is my intent, since drones can only hack and have a limited range. I was planning to make missions to show good drone routes. Perhaps use them for drone races.
We would also need a way to start them. In the drone view of a portal, the 'mission' button in the top left, could be used on the first portal. It could check for missions that have 'drone hacks', if that feature were added to mission authoring tool.
I think I’d be more okay with this if there were drone specific missions and they were displayed in their own area, separate from current missions.
Expanding Drones in a way that is in no way 'equivalent' to what players do in person, it could work without damaging the accomplishment of normal missions.
If the concern is that drones make missions too easy, the stat for unique missions could be left unchanged when doing a mission by drone. Or have a new stat for unique missions completed by drone.
If a mission is designed for drone, but could be done in person, is that a bad thing?
I was thinking that 'hack' would be expanded to include drone hacks, so the authoring tool doesnt require a change, just the client and/or server.
But it was my intent to create new missions to show people interesting drone paths.
I'm looking for more ways to play ingress safely from home, while the pandemic is on. Expanding drone functionality is one way. But we dont want them to be too powerful. Missions are mostly harmless.
I think a new stat would have to be included and separate. I'm also not sure if I'd want them displayed with the OG missions. Or, maybe they are mixed in and drone missions have a tiny little icon in the corner or something, so it's plainly obvious which were done in person and which were done by drone. Or just a tap on your profile switches from human to drone missions...
I'm with you though, I think there is much room for drone use with Ingress. It's a little unfortunate it hasn't got much love from Niantic.
What I'd love to be able to do is to occasionally hack one portal in a mission by drone. Missions should be about exploration, not about spending an hour circling a closed government building trying to drift onto the portal in the middle (and this was a Mission Day mission!), spending an hour and a half trying to drift onto the piece of art I'm standing at the base of among the skyscrapers, or wading out onto an eroded beach to hack a portal that's no longer accessible even at low tide.
If you think this can be abused, then sell a consumable item in the CMU store that lets the next drone hack emulate a normal in person hack.
The abuse would be if the drone is allowed to do more than one hack per mission, at a time when it could only make one move per hour - ruining the mission's average elapsed time. People doing it in-person in 15 minutes, would be averaged with people doing with-drones in 8 hours - and the resulting average would mean nothing.
This could be prevented by (a) keeping it to drone-only missions, or (b) limit one drone hack per mission.
Comments
Nope. Missions promote exploration. It would suck to drop a drone at an airport during a layover or in a town while quickly driving through and be able to knockout all mission murals in the area without ever really visiting the locations the missions are promoting.
The addition of drone-only/enabled missions might be a decent middle ground, but opening all current missions to drones by default would be pretty unpopular.
I think I’d be more okay with this if there were drone specific missions and they were displayed in their own area, separate from current missions.
you might tap an icon to view drone missions..
Ive put in some miles and effort for some of the missions Ive done and I feel like they would lose value knowing others had done them from their couch...
I agree with @ZeroHecksGiven. I like the idea of something like missions that we could do with drones, because the current 'alternate between 2 high level portals for the best gear and most glyph points' mechanic is boring, but I don't think allowing drones (or at least the mk1 drone) into the existing mission system would work well at all, not least because missions can have larger gaps than a drone can reach, which wouldn't be much fun for agents.
Creating missions for drones is my intent, since drones can only hack and have a limited range. I was planning to make missions to show good drone routes. Perhaps use them for drone races.
We would also need a way to start them. In the drone view of a portal, the 'mission' button in the top left, could be used on the first portal. It could check for missions that have 'drone hacks', if that feature were added to mission authoring tool.
Daaaang, missions for drone races could be really cool!!!
I think I’d be more okay with this if there were drone specific missions and they were displayed in their own area, separate from current missions.
Expanding Drones in a way that is in no way 'equivalent' to what players do in person, it could work without damaging the accomplishment of normal missions.
If the concern is that drones make missions too easy, the stat for unique missions could be left unchanged when doing a mission by drone. Or have a new stat for unique missions completed by drone.
If a mission is designed for drone, but could be done in person, is that a bad thing?
I was thinking that 'hack' would be expanded to include drone hacks, so the authoring tool doesnt require a change, just the client and/or server.
But it was my intent to create new missions to show people interesting drone paths.
I'm looking for more ways to play ingress safely from home, while the pandemic is on. Expanding drone functionality is one way. But we dont want them to be too powerful. Missions are mostly harmless.
I think a new stat would have to be included and separate. I'm also not sure if I'd want them displayed with the OG missions. Or, maybe they are mixed in and drone missions have a tiny little icon in the corner or something, so it's plainly obvious which were done in person and which were done by drone. Or just a tap on your profile switches from human to drone missions...
I'm with you though, I think there is much room for drone use with Ingress. It's a little unfortunate it hasn't got much love from Niantic.
What I'd love to be able to do is to occasionally hack one portal in a mission by drone. Missions should be about exploration, not about spending an hour circling a closed government building trying to drift onto the portal in the middle (and this was a Mission Day mission!), spending an hour and a half trying to drift onto the piece of art I'm standing at the base of among the skyscrapers, or wading out onto an eroded beach to hack a portal that's no longer accessible even at low tide.
If you think this can be abused, then sell a consumable item in the CMU store that lets the next drone hack emulate a normal in person hack.
I can't imagine what Niantic might see in this that could be abused. It's 1 freaking drone hack per hour. What's there to abuse?
This would be such a huge quality of life improvement for people who do missions and encounter an unexpected roadblock.
The abuse would be if the drone is allowed to do more than one hack per mission, at a time when it could only make one move per hour - ruining the mission's average elapsed time. People doing it in-person in 15 minutes, would be averaged with people doing with-drones in 8 hours - and the resulting average would mean nothing.
This could be prevented by (a) keeping it to drone-only missions, or (b) limit one drone hack per mission.